On the E-dub (the long version)

The EW at roughly 26 cfs:

Man. I'm too damn busy. I can't believe I haven't fished the truckee in over 2 weeks with the amazing weather we've had-- and flows look absolutely fantastic holding fairly steadily just below 400cfs... Anyways, I had an amazing day on the East Walker the weekend before last with a couple of fishing friends -- overcast but warm weather, a deserted stream, and about 40 fish to hand personally (Justin had about the same). It took me a while to get a feel for casting a small nymph rig from my knees and how to sneak up on a hole without spooking it. I also made constant adjustments to my nymph rig for about two hours of fishing until I settled on a combination of a stonefly with a disco midge or a bwo nymph for a dropper. Both combos ended up being dynamite.

My stonefly nymph:

A chewed up #18 disco midge:

my bwo nymph (gray worked well there):

For the first half of the day almost every fish I caught took the disco midge. I tried a lot of other droppers including trying to match the naturals closely. I thought my bwo nymph in olive was the perfect match for all of the nymphs I was seeing but the gray ended up being a much more productive nymph-- this almost always holds true on the Truckee too... go figure. As for bugs the underside of every rock was alive with cased caddis and a prolific amount of mayfly nymphs. Toward midday there was also a bunch of bwo's coming off and almost every pool had small risers that would continue to make rings in the calm water right in front of you if you were sneaky enough.

hidden life:

a decent match?:

I hiked my ass off and learned where the fish were hiding. It seemed to be all about cover-- deep water with undercut banks or the water beneath big bunches of dead willows was the most productive water. I lost more flies than I care to think about but I got the hang of throwing side arm casts to get the flies under the bushes while keeping the indicator out from under the branches-- every time it was either a snag or a fish.

guaranteed to hold fish:

I caught a fair number of spunky browns mostly in the 12-14" range, a bunch of rainbows in the 14-18" range and a TON of whitefish, one of which was even 19". I think these are big fish for small water and to tell you the truth I liked catching the browns and the whitefish best. You might be thinking "What?!" -- but let me explain; Very few of the rainbows seemed nice and healthy (like the one below), most had stubby fins, a silvery color and were crawling with leeches. Gross. Now I know why the SJW is so effective on this river... However, all the browns and whitefish were feisty and appeared to be in great shape:

one of the browns:

one of the healthier rainbows:

one of many:

As I said I hiked my arse off and eventually I think I got to some water that doesn't get hit as often. I really started hoping for a bigger fish at this point and crouched lower and moved slower and tried my best to fish the difficult spots-- it finally paid off. Under a big clump of gnarled willows my indicator darted sideways and I set the hook on a fish that immediately took me up into some fast water then back down and under some branches. To keep it short this fish made me look like a fool l and I had to bury the rod tip under water numerous times to pull him out of the sticks with 5x tippet-- let's say I was a happy camper when I put the net on this guy:

Just shy of 20" and healthy
(took a disco midge):

I kept fishing landing a bunch more rainbows and after a while the disco midge started taking less and less fish and the bwo worked more effectively as a dropper. However towards late afternoon almost every fish was taking, yep you guessed it, the stonefly. I couldn't figure it out since there were bwo's all over the surface but, of course, I didn't spend too much time thinking about it since there were fish hammering my fly at every hole. Towards dusk it became apparent why the fish had been more prone all day to take stoneflies and an attractor versus a natural looking bwo pattern; Skwalas. These fish were gorging themselves all night on big protein-filled foodstuff:

mmm candyyy:

The very last fish of the day for me happened to be another nice brown, again, just shy of the 20" mark and very skinny-- it was an awesome end to an epic day and this fish and the other largish brown I caught were personal trophies that will keep me coming back.

I'd love to see this fish nice and fat:

At that point I would have loved to see what else the stonefly could raise out of the depths but the sun was almost gone and it was time to go. After all those fish, I envisioned the guys I was with thinking I was a bad-ass. But then Justin reminded me of my noobery and regaled me with similar tales of big fish numbers-- only he took all his fish in the slow slack water on small dries all day long. And, lo and behold, he caught the fish of the day-- a beautiful 21" brown that took a small (like size #16) attractor dry-- awesome: